The present invention disclosed herein relates generally to processing of electronic mail (e-mail). More particularly, the present invention relates to an apparatus and method for intelligently routing e-mail messages to computers and pagers by determining whether the intended recipient appears to be active at the computer.
It appears that modem professionals always want to stay xe2x80x9cconnectedxe2x80x9d in today""s information-intensive society. Either a one-way or two-way wireless paging device (pager) with a small but fully functional keyboard provides this sense of connectivity. The pager allows people to receive information when one is out of the office, for example, late at night or early in the morning, by sending and receiving plain-text electronic (e-mail) messages.
While the e-mailing between pagers provides the feeling of being always xe2x80x9cconnectedxe2x80x9d with the world, there are certain limitations on the operation of pagers for sending messages. Typically, the pager starts to exhaust its memory capacity after about 120-150 messages, which represents at most a few day""s worth of incoming e-mail for most users. This limited memory capacity, together with the somewhat difficult user interface, makes e-mailing via pagers not a preferred choice of communication. For these as well as other reasons, most users would prefer to receive e-mail via computers rather than pagers, if given a choice between the two.
Additionally, the conventional e-mail processing system merely forwards e-mail to a pager without determining first whether the intended recipient might be sitting at his workstation and reading e-mail, for example. As a result, the memory capacity of the pager is unnecessarily used.
Perhaps even more compelling issues are the elimination of annoying redundancy of information and the elimination of unnecessary distraction with respect to pagers. Whether the pager is producing an audible tone or vibrating, it necessarily has a mechanism for attracting the wearer""s attention. Although useful when away from a computer, such attention-grabbing mechanism is irritating to many people when it is activated while the wearer happens to be sitting at a computer. It is not easy to turn off this attention-grabbing mechanism, and if the wearer did turn it off, he would run the risk of leaving it off when he went away from the computer.
Another problem is as follows. Once the user is away from the computer, he does not want to re-read those messages already displayed on his computer screen. The conventional e-mail operation with pagers is, once again, deficient in this respect.
A need therefore exists for an apparatus and method that address the above concerns and overcome the disadvantages of the conventional e-mail processing systems.
It is an object of the present invention to provide electronic mail processing apparatus.
It is another object of the present invention to provide the electronic mail processing apparatus for intelligent routing of electronic messages.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide the electronic mail processing apparatus for intelligent routing of electronic messages between computers and pagers.
The above and other objects are achieved by an apparatus for routing electronic messages to pagers and computers. The apparatus comprises means for receiving an electronic message transmitted from one pager or computer to another pager or computer. Also included in the apparatus is means for obtaining the intended recipient""s status. The status is selected from active or inactive. The active status may indicate that the intended recipient is currently logged onto a network, and inactive status indicates the intended recipient is not currently logged in. The apparatus further comprises means for forwarding the electronic message to the intended recipient""s computer if the obtained status is active. If the obtained status is inactive, the electronic message is forwarded to the intended recipient""s pager.
In accordance with one aspect of the present invention, the apparatus further comprises means for detecting an activity by the recipient to determine the recipient""s status.